Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride Break Down Daryl and Carol Reunion (Exclusive)

Warning: This story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol episode 4. “It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again,” Daryl (Norman Reedus) told best friend Carol (Melissa McBride) in their last scene together on The Walking Dead series finale. Nearly two years and two continents later, Daryl and Carol reunited during Marion Genet’s (Anne Charrier) attack on the Nest at Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, where Daryl delivered Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) and his aunt Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) to safety last season. Meanwhile, Carol completed her own mission: tracking down Daryl halfway around the world.

Sunday’s episode, titled “La Paradis Pour Toi,” began with Daryl and Carol on opposing sides: Daryl a prisoner of Losang’s (Joel de la Fuente) religious resistance group Union de L’Espoir (Union of Hope), and Carol trapped behind enemy lines with the Pouvoir du Vivant (Power of the Living) as Genet turned her Guerriers into an army of Ampers: the amped-up zombies that are stronger and faster than your average walker.

With help from the excommunicated Guerrier Codron (Romain Levi), Carol infiltrated the abbey as it was besieged by Genet’s zombified soldiers. Carol then rescued Isabelle after Losang stabbed the former nun and left her to die when she refused to give up Laurent so that he could restore his flock’s waning faith by proving the boy is immune to bites.

As Daryl fought his way through the Nest to find Isabelle, he instead found Carol. Like their emotional reunion outside Terminus so long ago, Daryl was in disbelief as he raced over and embraced Carol in a tearful hug. Carol then took Daryl to Isabelle and comforted him as the woman he’d fallen in love with succumbed to her wounds and died in his arms.

Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride explain the Caryl reunion in Daryl Dixon Episode 4

“I felt like the anticipation of those two characters meeting up again is something that’s been talked about for so long, and so much, that the buildup to that happening was really natural,” Reedus tells ComicBook. “We worked really hard on making that as climactic as possible in the throes of all these things happening in all these different directions.”

“We worked really hard to get that right on the page,” Reedus added about crafting the Daryl and Carol reunion. “From Darryl’s perspective, his whole mission is failing outside the walls. He’s trapped and he’s just listening to the screams and the explosions and the fight going on and the kid [Laurent] and all these things. And he’s at the loneliest place he could possibly be in his head.”

The episode, directed by Daniel Percival and co-written by showrunner David Zabel and Jason Richman, underwent rewrites to make the Caryl reunion happen at the moment it was most unexpected: mid-battle.

“We rewrote that. We all got together and we talked about it and we changed that a little bit to make it so that it’s an elevated reunion, that it happens out of nowhere,” Reedus adds. “His focus is get out there, find the kid, save him, run from the screams, but run into the screaming. And it happens out of nowhere. And he’s like, ‘Is this real?’ It’s the person that he needed the most at the exact right time he needed her.”

By the end of the attack on the Nest, Reedus notes, Daryl is “completely isolated and failing, and it’s the last fight. And then to see her, I think it meant the most to him, rather than some other way of reuniting. It was at the right moment. It’s like the whole world just stops, and it’s about those two people.”

How Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol compares to The Walking Dead Season 5

The moment recalls Daryl and Carol’s big reunion in the Walking Dead season 5 episode “No Sanctuary,” where Carol returned to save the group from Terminus after being exiled from the prison by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). “It does mirror that Terminus reunion in that they stop in their tracks, and they’re just looking at each other,” McBride notes. “I like that it mirrors that, because it is such a trippy moment that’s on the other side of the world. It had to be a moment where he does think, ‘Is this even real?’ For both of them.”

Though there are similarities, Reedus points out that the scenes occur under “different circumstances.”

“That Terminus reunion, [Carol’s] in the back of his head. ‘Where is she? Where is she? Oh my God, there she is.’ And then like a little kid, he runs at her,” Reedus says. On Daryl Dixon, “It comes out of nowhere. And Daryl’s not with anybody. He’s not with any of that group. There’s nothing like that. He’s all by himself, and we really wanted that scene to be: The one person he needs is right in front of him at the right time when he’s at his lowest. And it had to be a different mindset.” I thought it was very different than Terminus.”

“It was very different, but at the same time, it’s similar in that they’re standing apart from each other and then go to one another,” McBride adds. “That, for me as a viewer, and as we were playing it out, had to be, ‘Is this a callback to that moment in his mind? Is this even real?’”

What was it like filming Daryl and Carol’s first scene together on Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol?

“That day was really chaotic,” Reedus recalls. “There were so many people and in a short amount of time, and a space that we had to extend. Every moment had to have something
happening in it. What happens is you do these long choreographed, long fight scenes, and sometimes they’re a little different every take. I kept thinking in my mind, ‘I wonder how close we’re going to get before I actually realize [it’s Carol].’ Is it gonna be mid-swing? I kept hoping that the timing gave us space to see each other and be together. It
worked out great.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and ComicBook TWD on Facebook for more Walking Dead Universe coverage.